It’s part of a series called ‘Sex – How To Do Everything’, which will be filmed next week. I will be in a studio discussion with the presenters, Em and Lo, focusing on how to have an open relationship. It is produced by TalkbackTHAMES, which is a company well known to UK TV viewers, having produced shows such as Grand Designs and QI (oh yes, and X Factor ). It will be on Channel Five at 11pm, on a Thursday some time in June or July (yes, I’ll let you know exactly when as soon as I find out) – the first episode is on 5th June. The presenters talk about it on their blog here. I’ve been promised a DVD and I will post a clip here when it’s been broadcast.

What advice would you give?

As it is a ‘how to’ show, it looks like they will be asking me questions like how a couple start to open up their relationship, how to suggest an open relationship to your partner, what problems to look out for and how to avoid them. Obviously I have lots of ideas on how to answer these questions, but there is so much that needs to be said that prioritising it is difficult.

So I’d like your help. What are the top three bits of advice you would give someone who is thinking about having an open relationship and doesn’t know where to start? Answers in a comment box please!

I’d like to think about couples who are currently monogamous (or where there has been cheating, or single people – take your pick which you focus on.

Would you like to join me on TV?

The producers are also looking for someone who is in an open/polyamorous relationship who could talk about their personal experiences: how they got into the relationship, why they wanted such a relationship and how they make it work for them. I won’t be talking about my personal experiences myself – I’m there to give general thoughts based on my research.

If anyone is interested, and can get to London next Friday, please contact me by email as soon as possible, preferably by Monday morning. I think they would be happy with one person,a couple or a group, and they haven’t mentioned any age or other restrictions. I would support you as much as I can in the process.

The first model is a committed couple who allow each other just sex outside their relationship. For a couple like this, the primary relationship is solid and the relationships with other lovers are of much lesser importance. The ‘flings’ or one-night stands outside the primary relationship give a buzz, a bit of fun, some relief of potential boredom, or just a change.

This first model includes couples who go together to sex parties and swinger’s clubs. Or it might be that one or other of them goes to such events, while the other isn’t interested (but knows about their partner going).

A second model is a couple who are committed primary partners but also have secondary partners. The secondary relationships are romantic and loving and ongoing, but the secondary partners do not share the everyday things in life to the same extent that primary partners do. Everyone knows that the primary relationship always comes first. Sometimes, two people who both have primary partners can be secondary partners to each other.

A third model is a triad or a larger group, in which three or more people form a committed, loving relationship. In these groups, no one couple-relationship is more important than the other couple-relationships. The group usually live together, share their everyday lives and feel committed to stay together as a group.

And the fourth model is an individual who doesn’t have a primary partner but instead has a network of partners with whom they share parts of their lives. This can be like conventional dating, with new lovers coming and going, one-night stands or flings lasting weeks or months, and perhaps some ongoing long-distance lovers. The difference from conventional singles is that the person openly has more than one lover and tells all their lovers this (though they don’t necessarily give details of each lover to the others).

There are many possible variations and combinations of these models. I have come across examples of:

• two committed primary partners who are generally monogamous but to open up their relationship just once and a specific circumstances
• two primary opposite-sex couples where each man is also a secondary partner with each woman from the other couple
• a polyamorous network of partners and lovers where some people have two equal primary partners as well as several secondaries and where friendship and romantic relationships blend into one another
• a committed triad who allow each other casual lovers (as in the first model) or secondary partners (as in their second model)
• a married couple who are searching for a woman to form a triad with (this seems to be very common, though stable triads that form in this way are much rarer)
• a quad in which all members were primary partners to all other members.

Sometimes one kind of set-up will evolve into another: for instance if a secondary partner of one of a couple turns into an equal partner in a triad with both of them. Or a relationship starts off monogamous, then the couple explore opening it up but with strict rules to ensure that any ‘outside sex’ is only casual, and after a while they relax the rules and perhaps meet someone who becomes a secondary partner or form a triad.

Following on from my post on promises, it is important when making promises to work out between you which model of open relationship you would find acceptable and which you are sure you want to rule out. Remember that you and your relationship will evolve and your promises might need to reflect that possibility.

In the mean time, I have in fact been busy writing for Bella magazine, who invited me to contribute to their ‘points of view’ page. The question being asked was ‘Can open relationships ever work?’ (in response, once again, to Tilda Swinton’s revelation of having two partners) and I was asked to write something for the ‘Yes’ side of the argument. The article is now out (on UK newsstands, not online). Here’s an excerpt from my bit:

An open relationship isn’t an easy option and not everyone can do it. You have to remember that you don’t own the person you love. You must listen, negotiate, keep your promises and be completely honest with your partner.

For some people, monogamy works well. But if you find monogamy difficult, an open relationship is more honest than having a secret affair.

The ‘No’ side was given by Bibi Lynch, ’sex columnist and presenter’. She says:

Of course they don’t work!… Sure, some people (and I mean philandering men, here) will bang on about how monogamy is unnatural… But I think the technical expression for that argument is ‘trying to justify our inability to keep our pants on’.

I might be biased, but her piece seemed to have been put together without much thought and certainly without much research. I appreciate that she was asked to write something specifically denying that open relationships can work, but I would have thought that with her apparent years of experience writing on sex and relationships, Bibi Lynch might have come across a few positive examples. But no, she spouts the same stuff we have all heard again and again, about ‘commitment’ making a relationship special and staying faithful to one person being what relationships are all about.

She even says that open relationships are not really relationships at all. Well, that’s a strange definition of a relationship. What about when two (or more) people love each other deeply, share their daily lives with each other, have a special bond? Does making their relationship open negate all that? Of course not.

Open relationships can, for those who go about them without much thought, be an excuse to sleep around while having a regular partner to act as a date when you need it. (See this Yahoo Answers discussion for an example.) I agree: that kind of ‘open relationship’ isn’t ideal.

But a properly thought out open relationship means considering your partner’s wish to have other lovers, not just your own. So it cannot be about ‘our inability to keep our pants on’, it is about the other partner as well. It is about giving your partner opportunities, not about selfishly wanting opportunities just for yourself.

Bibi Lynch does admit near the end of her article:

Maybe I’m an insecure fool – I did walk out of a restaurant once because my date was paying the waitress too much attention – but the thought of my boyfriend even kissing another woman makes me feel physically sick.

OK, so she is the kind of person who gets easily jealous. An open relationship is probably not the right thing for her. That doesn’t mean they aren’t great for other people.

The bias of the editorial team shows in the photo accompanying the articles (posed by models): a man and a woman smile at each other across the picture, while a stony-faced woman looks at the smiling woman and has her arms crossed and one hand on her chin, as if to say ‘hmm, what am I meant to think about this, then?’. The caption says ‘Could you trust your man with another woman?’ – again, no suggestion that the woman might be the one to benefit from opening up a relationship.

So, not an entirely balanced view, but what can we expect from a mainstream women’s magazine? It is probably the first time they have covered nonmonogamy at all, except of course for thousands of stories about infidelity. It can only be a good thing that they have presented the subject in this format, with two sides to the argument. And good for Tilda Swinton for prompting mags like this to think about ethical nonmonogamy.

I’m hoping that the intelligent readers who happen upon this article will realise that the Yes argument is carefully researched and based on facts, whereas the No argument is pure opinion. If you’re one such intelligent reader, welcome to the Open Fidelity blog and I hope you find some useful information here.

• a couple in a long-term committed relationship in which one or both of them have ongoing secondary relationships with another partner, with everyone’s knowledge and consent;
• three people who form a committed relationship between all (I call this a triad);
• four people in who form a committed relationship between all, or in which all are linked to all the others but aren’t necessarily romantically or sexually involved with everyone else (a quad);
• larger groups in which each person has a romantic relationship with at least one and mostly more than one other member.

These would probably all be classified as polyamorous relationships by most people familiar with the term (do you disagree? Add a comment!). They all involve romantic relationships and long-term commitment, and generally sex as well, with more than one person.

Polyamory is also often seen as an identity: someone might describe themself as a polyamorous person, that is, someone who is capable of polyamorous relationships and would like to be in such relationships, regardless of whether they have one, two or more or even no partners at the moment.

But there are other types of open, honest, responsible nonmonogamous relationships that some wouldn’t include within the concept of polyamory. For example:

• couples who otherwise behave monogamously but sometimes go together to sex parties or swingers’ clubs and have sexual encounters with others, in each other’s presence;
• couples who have agreed that they can each have sexual encounters with other people but don’t want these other encounters to develop into romantic relationships and have agreed rules to keep the relationships with others casual;
• people who aren’t in a committed relationship at the moment and who date (or plan to date) several people in parallel, explaining to each new date that they are also seeing (and perhaps having sex with) other people.
• people who would prefer to be monogamous but who are in a relationship with someone who finds this difficult and have therefore agreed to allow them other relationships as long as they are honest ones.

This blog is called Open Fidelity rather than Polyamory because I aim to show that the ideas of polyamory can be useful to anyone, including people who don’t identify as polyamorous themselves. Most people are interested in long-term relationships with only one person at a time, even if they don’t want to be strictly monogamous. So polyamorous relationships are probably always going to be a minority pursuit. I believe everyone can find these ideas useful, even those who fully intend to be monogamous, and even perhaps those who intend to cheat on their partners.

So what is Open Fidelity? It is being open about your attractions to more than one person and how you act on these attractions, and it is being faithful to any promises you have made to your partner. Before explaining this in more detail I will look further into the problems with the currently accepted way of doing things.